Listening

Being listened to doesn't seem all that important to us until it doesn't happen. We think that we can live independently, without others, if we are alright with our own company, or we tend to believe that having friends and family, who we can share time with and talk with is enough, especially if they care about us, help us enjoy our time and keep us safe or help us out when we need it. However we also need people who will listen to us, not in the psychiatrist way of let us spill all of our problems, just in a friend way, of not cutting us off about something totally unrelated while we are telling them a story, of responding to it appropriately, and giving us some attention.
We rarely ever notice that we need this until we are deprived of it. While we have one friend who loves to hear about the tiny adventures that occur in our day to day lives, we can be content with being talked over by other friends. Perhaps this is why so many of us talk over each other without ever actually listening to what the people around us have to say. Perhaps we forget or never realize how frustrating it could be for them to be talked over, or to be only vaguely involved in conversation.
We should not only realize this but try to remember it when someone is talking to us, when we find ourselves getting distracted by the junk in our minds. We must try to pay attention, to what they are saying, and to what they actually mean. (We may not realize just what it will mean to them.)